Voltage Limit
by chakramrain
Summary: Beca Mitchell hates 'Twilight'. She's a young oddity repeating college for the fifth time this decade, feeding off mortals with electric currents in the blood. As she meets twenty-one she'll never age again; Dr. Mitchell, exception to natural laws, explains that she should find a partner with a compatible and magnetic pulse. She finds Chloe, part-time Barden Bella, full-time idiot.
1. Definitions

"My first piece of advice: run before I work up an appetite," Beca settled upon the rooftop, legs dangling off the ledge.

The man scrambled onto his feet, forgot to dust off the sand and grit from dress pants and escaped the scene in the only way he could: by two legs and flailing arms. Beca watched with slight amusement, kicking a beer can into the air and watching it slow sensually before nose-diving, headlong. The resultant clatter resounded through a quiet night.

College was never entertaining. Repeating college had already become monotonous. Dealing with the airheads who hadn't had the pleasure of repeating was where Beca drew the line. Her forearms were bandaged, wrapped in thick cloth and where her knuckles were hidden the white tape was worn and scruffy.

The slim gadget in the pocket of her jeans began to buzz and rattle her awake. Beca scooped the item from her side and answered the call.

"I know you don't like college-"

"I hate college, Dr. Mitchell. Perhaps you enjoy the excited, sparkling eyes and the occasional flings for better grades, but give me a break."

Dr. Mitchell cleared his throat on the other end, sounding terribly intelligent as he did so.

"Beca, give it a chance. It's all about renewing the understanding and interaction. You don't have to get a boyfriend or hide your talents at music and English. Just stop leaving dead bodies in your wake. It's troublesome that we have to clean up such things as we go along. We need new slates every few years, you know?"

Beca nodded, even as she knew her parent wouldn't be able to monitor her at such a distance, "I know. I haven't killed anyone this first week, Dad; what an achievement. I do everything cleanly unless something comes up. I feed better than you do; I do it just fine on my own."

"If you say so, Beca."

The dark-haired female hopped off the three-storey structure, relishing the drop in her veins and feeling a cold pump work every piston to a minimum. She landed spectacularly and found herself stalking away smoothly. She compared the heightened abilities to her past self being able to avoid hurdles as she shuffled along the subway, head buried in a laptop's waves. The newness had worn off and the most part of her life was spent chaining her limbs together so she wouldn't catch a particularly irritating insect out of thin air at whim and fancy.

A boy exited the building not far off the brighter lights, emptying a trash can into a dumpster. Beca pushed her fingers into her jeans and attempted to look less comfortable in the chilling temperatures. After all, Beca had only a hooded sweater, shirt and jeans on in the few degrees above zero.

"You really shouldn't be out here at eleven. The thugs circle the area."

"No worries," Beca muttered, "I'll get back on my own."

"No, no, I'll walk you."

As Beca neared him, she lifted her eyes, letting them push forth a glaring shimmer of embers behind the inky black. The shards of golden honey and white nearly knocked the young sir off balance, but he shook his head quickly and waved her along without hesitation.

"Sorry about that," he offered, "I didn't know, really."

"Find an easier snack."

"Of course," he said, but his deep bow left her prickled.

Beca felt nothing stoking the atmosphere about them and released her hands from the pockets, speeding up the gravel and feeling it tense under her fast movements and hearing it crack in the cold vapour instantly after. Her feet, in Converse sneakers, took her up the gates and over barbed wire, letting her tumble back into the lit roads.

There was an intense amount of energy radiating from her as she slipped onto campus before the bell for some nonsensical curfew rang out, ricocheting off every solid surface and being absorbed by grassy soccer patches. Beca kicked at an inflated piece of plastic, hearing it scream as it hit a goalpost, only to shatter, explode and be split right down the middle.

"Wicked," Jesse laughed, his hearty voice following her as his feet were.

If only Beca knew the ways to kick a lovesick puppy off her ankle. She didn't, however, and she contemplated snapping his neck and burying it beneath the red earthen track lining the field.

"You should try out. The clubs and whatnot are auditioning this Friday."

"You try out, then. I'm just great."

Jesse hopped forward, frolicking ecstatically, "come with me."

Beca stared at his face incredulously, imagining it melting like a candle's wax. She cleared her mind of all disastrous images and snorted at his proposition. That she could kick a ball with velocity and strength was hardly reason enough to enter an idiotic sorority of a club. In fact, Beca's dexterity had been earned. Her agility had been perfectly rubbish before her father slapped her into aiming before throwing punches.

"No thanks," Beca turned from him to ascend the stairs along the corridor, "really."

Jesse's eager footsteps slowly faded as he moved towards his dormitory.

Beca would have to adjust to repeating years, looking stupid and going through the same sickly sweet friendship-offerings annually. She would have to maintain the furnace burning within her and hating every second. It'd been a decade of colleges, really.

She didn't want to explain why. She didn't want to risk being tossed into the gaol cells. She certainly didn't want to make mistakes as her father had. She could see him staying youthful, still, each year, and staying the same. She made changes every once in a while. She aged a human year physically every five years. It was a disgusting sort of purgatory, watching the world going slowly before her eyes, both because of delayed human reaction speeds and how she seemed to need to react as slowly.

"When you reach twenty-one you'll lose all humanity," he had told her, "because your mother was human. Enjoy it, Beca."

Beca didn't want to enjoy it. Beca felt nothing for life or the afterlife. Beca detested the notion of supernaturalism because before she found out in elementary school of her own existence she had been the kid who absolutely abhorred 'Twilight' and every other teenager-targeted series.

Yet she felt the electricity seep into her almost weekly then. It coursed through every vein and sped, racing, faster than blood. She never had health checkups. She barely ever took her pulse, because frightening the daylights from herself wasn't her idea of great fun. Each time a 'victim', as each misogynistic male author put so cleverly in every 'mature and hair-raising' plot in science-fiction, lifted their head skywards and had their eyes struck open, as if their eyelids had been held up by paperclips, Beca would achieve her surge of energy.

She would have gained thirty pounds from foods if they were all she consumed. Even as she did need to consume them, she needed small but frequent amounts. She had an apple a day. The electric currents zipping through few human beings were what aided the nutrients' assimilation and the travel of oxygen through haemocyanin, staining her blood blue. She was, perhaps, related to arachnids and the horseshoe crab in that aspect. Copper held the molecules and gave her a winded breath.

Soon enough there would be nothing but the molecules and pigments running through her via the fierce, white-hot tides. There would be no pumping heart and the pistons would be the warmth achieved by obtaining human blood. And Beca would drink energy and every once in a while sip blood from those around her. And while she was turning twenty-one in a few months she had mild disdain for drinking on a daily basis as her father told her she would do for the first two years.

Beca didn't ask her father why he bothered getting a ring for her mother, proposing and promising an eternally happy-ever-after. But each time he mentioned her and she left a piece of silence between him and her she would see deep in the undercurrents of his eyes that he loved her and wanted her to have whatever came after natural death. That she understood: he could never have stolen such a precious thing from her. And yet she wanted to have no relation to his follies and lies.

And he had suggested so subtly the previous evening over a dinner of pizza from a microwave (one would think if one had a century to live one would learn to cook pasta at least) that she could find herself a blood-slave. And she had nearly spit into his face, catapulting a little bolus of chewed food into where his face might have been broken for an hour or so.

"Come on, now," her father had cajoled her into believing, "it will be less tedious. It will be clean. It will be fair."

"You said it yourself;" Beca had hissed, "you said it was beyond easy to develop another sort of connection through physical connection. Why don't you have one?"

"I've lost the need for one."

And it was true, because Beca's father was one of the only existing exceptions to 'supernatural' laws. Only Beca ever referred to the species as 'supernatural' because it would be like previously referencing a good friend as 'human' every now and again for the veterans to refer to themselves as 'out of the ordinary'. Dr. Mitchell, scientist, inventor, writer and whatever extraordinaire, had attained a holy absence of the need for external sources of flowing energy. His was renewable, and so he was virtually unable to be reduced to nothingness unless a boulder from the heavens hit him in the everywhere and an enormous magnetic field sucked away every bit of energy from his fibres.

Both of them tried not to cut themselves in accidents so bystanders wouldn't have to wonder about why blue blood ran from their wounds and sealed the surface abrasions ever so quickly.

Beca didn't want to look for a blood-slave. It sounded thoroughly extensive and laborious and Beca wanted to put on her headphones and fall asleep for the rest of her life (what a joke). She didn't want to develop an unbreakable connection, as what was described in the nonexistent manual. Thinking of the line-up for the job's tryouts and recalling Jesse's enthusiasm, Beca shuddered.

She mulled over every detail as she examined the ceiling. When she heard feet down the hallway about seven metres away Beca sat up and readied herself to stick a baseball bat down Jesse's throat. The rap on the door, however, was softer than expected and Beca abandoned suspicions.

"Hey there," an also-overly-eager redhead smiled down at her, "I'm Chloe, the co-captain of the 'Barden Bellas'. I've been watching you make beats on the rooftop for the past two evenings. I didn't see your name on the signup sheet for the upcoming auditions, so I was wondering if you knew about it."

Beca wondered if she should flick Chloe on the forehead for looking over her shoulder for the past two days and then wondered if she should stab herself with a pocketknife because she hadn't been aware of the spying-on. She decided against both for the better of her being.

"I do," Beca attempted as nicely as was possible, "I'm just not interested."

Beca let her hooded eyelids rise for a bit and studied the person opposite her as she leant upon the door's frame. She found herself lost for words as she caught the blue ripples of an island's surrounding waters in a pair of orbs beaming upon her.

"I've heard you hum and mumble your lyrics," Chloe protested, "why not?"

"Singing in a group of girly, bikini-ready girls is not my cup of tea," Beca almost chuckled, "that's far from humming and mumbling lyrics."

"Oh," Chloe answered, looking crestfallen, "well, I'm sorry for bothering you."

Beca bobbed her head once, but Chloe showed no signs of leaving. Instead, the girl of fiery hair and, Beca noticed, cotton pyjamas, looked down at her bare feet and sighed. Beca's senses tingled and she realised that the temperatures outside of a closed room were definitely unsuitable for any living human.

At this her hands lunged forward, digging into the girl's sides and dragging her into the room before slamming the door. Chloe was surprised to find herself roosting upon a badly-done bed and a basin of warm water beneath her feet.

"You're inhumanly stupid to be outside there with no shoes or coat!" Beca chided.

Chloe slipped her feet into the water and looked up at Beca, who had her arms folded and eyebrows furrowed.

"You're in a tank top and shorts."

"Yeah, well, I'm resistant," Beca fell over some words and put two fingers to Chloe's neck, "good heavens, you're colder than I am."

Beca felt her inner heat take kicks at her flesh and skin. Slowly she warmed up to a reasonable temperature before touching Chloe's cheek again.

"For how long have you been going door-to-door?"

"Just half an hour. Aubrey didn't want to ask around and I needed it done before the lights went out. The patrolling level-heads will move about at twelve and the previous time I got off lucky flirting with Tom."

Chloe let her toes wiggle in the water as Beca nearly doubled over in annoyance at the older female's foolishness. She certainly had no affection for 'Tom' and cared less for Chloe's stories to tell. She dipped a pinkie into the basin and found the water losing heat.

"Lights out!" a heavy voice called out behind the door.

"You really shouldn't have let me in," Chloe looked up.

Beca felt her cheeks go ruddy at the thought of her idiocy and having to hole up with someone else for the night, unless she could knock someone out and steal Chloe back into her room. Thankfully Beca was the kid without a roommate and unfortunately she was the kid whose father would be least happy at her causing a ruckus at night.

"It's fine. I'll turn up the heater. You take the bed."

It was then that Beca remembered that she had yanked the plastic cover off the square holding the dial for the heater. She found the wires undone and certain copper clippings removed. Basically Beca had been desperate on the first day for wires to refurbish the deejay systems and had drawn out the useless bit of the housing.

"I guess it's not functioning," Beca said sheepishly.

Again she placed the back of her hand to Chloe's neck.

"You're freezing. You're going to get a fever by morning."

"I've a performance tomorrow," Chloe groaned, "what a bummer."

Beca heard the scratchiness emerging from Chloe's lungs, "yeah, you're falling sick. Perhaps I should get you to the sick bay."

"And let Aubrey slaughter me when she wakes?" Chloe giggles, "no thanks. It's okay."

Beca felt herself churn with the thoughts of the hassle, but began the burn of energy within her from the latest feeding, just three hours ago, and knew that she would feel no urge for the night. With a burst of sparks in the veins Beca drew close, pulling the blankets over Chloe and winding up tangled with the redhead in the bed.

"Goodnight, Chloe," Beca said, reaching up for the lamp.

Chloe, slightly frazzled, shook uncomfortably but could do nothing. She resigned herself to enjoying the provision of heat, wondering where she'd left her bunny slippers. Aubrey would be furious by then, she thought. Anyhow she found her abdomen drawn up against Beca's and a resilient palm against the small of her back. She let her eyes close.

The night was a poignant intermission to a blossoming catastrophe, like the calm before the storm.

When Beca woke there was a deep aching in her chest. Her throat was sandpapery again, her voice rough and rickety. She seemed to need to gasp for air and Chloe was next to her, fast asleep. Chloe's temperature was appropriate, Beca noted contentedly.

Beca was spent from the expended energy. The constant heating system drew up her remains of electric waves and the current was drawing itself into a negative and suddenly Chloe looked perfectly edible, red hair off to one side, splayed across a pillow, neck bared and skin supple, flesh succulent. She could see the energy pulsing through the blood underneath translucency.

Chloe woke, eyelids fluttering.

"Good morning," Beca said stiffly.

"Wow, _you_ ended up having a sore throat. Water?" Chloe smiled, stretching in bed as if it was perfectly natural for her to be in Beca's bed every morning and Beca nearly believed in that.

"Chloe, you should leave."

"Oh."

Beca shook her head, "it's not like that. I don't mean that you've been trouble. You haven't."

But really, Chloe could have been in huge trouble if she didn't up and leave in a minute's space. Beca, a dormant volcano in her slumber, was ready to rumble and tear the earth apart.

"No, I get it."

"Chloe, sorry, it's just that I've things to do. You know what? See you at the auditions. I'll come. Just go, please. I need to freshen up."

All was right with the planet and somehow with Beca when Chloe offered a shining smile and tore through the doorway, waving.

Dr. Mitchell had been strolling when he noticed the flash of pink and red run from Beca's doors. In half a minute he appeared on the fourth level, leather shoes clacking along and arm shooting out to hook Beca's neck in a hold as she attempted to swing herself onto the roof again.

"You exposed yourself to her?" he asked tentatively.

"If I did," Beca heaved, "I wouldn't be panting and raving now, would I? I gave warmth for the night. I fed too little."

"Here," her father placed a bag of blood from the hospital in the vicinity; Beca did not give a glance to the registered name or blood type to be grateful and inhaled the blood, feeling the waning energy.

The worst thing about blood bags was that the energy swam around for about a month and dissipated after, just as the blood was dead. Due to a bout of luck Beca had herself a quick meal and found herself breathing again.

"She seems nice," her father commented.

Beca threw him a glower, "don't you dare."

"Dare what?" he smiled patronisingly.

"Don't you get me near her."

"Beca, it isn't normal that you would be heaving so quickly. Her energy must be strong."

"Strong?" Beca questioned, impatient.

"Beca, some people are attractive to us. This is because their energy is converted into ours the quickest and so is the most fulfilling. These people make great counterparts and actually do well as blood-slaves. You would have to feed very little from her. She would enjoy it too."

"And what about my mother?" Beca asked of her late mother, disgusted, "did she have that same energy?"

"She never knew. I fed off her with anaesthesia in her sleep. I didn't do that because it hurt. It doesn't hurt when the energy sources are compatible. I now have a renewable source. Humans take it from organic compounds. You take it from them. I take it from myself now. It didn't hurt her, only risked waking her. You won't hurt your friend, if my suspicions are correct."

"I don't want to take the chance," Beca turned to close the door, thoughts of Chloe's blue eyes assaulting her from all sides, "I don't."


	2. Explorations

Beca wanted to fry him alive.

"I knew you'd come."

She really did.

"Was it my charming smile?"

She'd have paid _anyone_ to ship him off to Timbuktu or North Korea.

Beca shoved her hands into the billowing pockets of her sweatpants, looking perfectly out of setting on campus. She was unglamorous and great with it. She kept on a jacket and a vintage 'Chicago Bulls' snapback on the head, bubbling her temperature at ten degrees above the line.

As Jesse skipped along, Beca let the scents permeate. Smells were always stronger and more pungent after rainfall and a drought of cold weather. She caught the scent of ground pork and greasy fries to her right and the heaps of earwax from the Deaf Jews on the left. To her front was the posse of cheerleaders who Beca thought great for Jesse's selection.

And then straight ahead, through the crowds, was a hint of rosemary and thyme, slow-roasted over lemongrass.

"You came!" Chloe applauded senselessly, much to the obvious annoyance of the upright-standing female next to her, "here's a flyer."

Beca looked down at the piece of paper and every word printed on it, noting that everything was capitalised, not forgetting the exclamation points. She looked back up at Chloe, who was dressed in a floral-print dress and cardigan. Beca politely stuffed the flyer into a pocket.

"When are auditions?"

"In an hour," Chloe looked at the large clock of Roman numerals across the square, "fifteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds."

Jesse smiled, "impressive."

Chloe only smiled back.

"A little too alternative," the blonde next to Chloe made an airy comment.

Beca ignored her, feeling the strangest sensation boiling in her stomach. As the throbbing in her skull rose to an incredible velocity and pressure, Beca placed a thumb underneath her jaw and jabbed herself in a lymph node. The shocking of the nerves calmed her momentarily. The strike of lightning had not been as concentrated as before. She thought of the previous as a rock in the eye and then as an excessively thick cordial. She would just have to prepare herself for future encounters.

Perhaps there wouldn't be future encounters, anyhow.

"I forgot to ask around for your name," Chloe mentioned, "was it Rebecca?"

"Just Beca," Beca cut her off, "Beca Mitchell."

"Chloe Beale."

They had a handshake.

"Aubrey Posen," the blonde sliced in sharply, "now that we're all introduced, Chloe and I have business to take care of."

Beca didn't have complaints, but raised both brows in a sardonic questioning and spun on her heel to leave. Jesse tagged along, admiring the blasé confidence of the young men not far behind popping their heads to tunes and harmonising effectively. He strode over with an air of hopefulness and picked up a different flyer.

"Chloe Beale," Beca let the name roll off her tongue like a mouthful of jelly and pursed her lips before ducking into the campus dormitories again for shadow and shelter.

"Chloe Beale indeed," Dr. Mitchell stepped onto the scene, hands behind his back and spectacles sitting upon his chiselled features, "That is her name."

"We're already barely human. Let's not add on the 'creep' factor, yeah?" Beca made for stamping back around before her shoulders were caught by a concerned man, a father and not a villain that disembowelled victims.

"Won't you make friends?" her father pleaded with his stubborn daughter, "make her a blood-slave or not, I want you to make friends. You don't have to entangle her in the issues."

Beca let her eyes settle with her father's dark ones, recalling his bright emerald ones from when he was most securely fearsome, "issues are all around. The others have cleared themselves from this place. I don't mean the nomads. I mean those who have claimed this area or state as theirs. They can sense you here. They sense me too. Soon enough I'll make a mess of things again and we'll move. I don't want temporary things. Permanence is the goal. But then again, only you and I are permanent, correct?"

Dr. Mitchell felt a hit of maturity from his daughter's words, but could not work out an appropriate response. He only nodded again, uselessly, agonisingly. He placed his fingers to his daughter's cheeks and admired the paleness and the hints of bluish pigmentation.

"I'm sorry, Beca."

"Don't be."

"She doesn't _have_ to be temporary."

"You're suggesting stupidity," Beca gave a short grunt; "you're suggesting I almost kill her and then revive her. Let's not pretend that the success rate is pathetic, then."

Dr. Mitchell shrugged, releasing Beca, "it's your choice."

His daughter turned to leave, hearing the clock meet twelve and feeling the hour draining itself from her. And all of a sudden, in a spasmodic upheaval of sorts, Beca stepped forth, chest convulsing, as her knees found the floor and her hands followed suit.

There were three jolts as energy left the body. Dr. Mitchell slit his wrist carefully, soundlessly. He cupped his daughter's mouth to muffle the screams and made an incision at the jugular with a fingernail. The energy transfer was quick and it had to be so because electric fields were being destroyed all around.

The professor stood by his daughter, watching the skin stitch itself together seamlessly. As he took in the vibrations of oncoming heels he made shows of checking her pulse and her forehead.

When Beca re-entered a state of consciousness she almost felt the need to purge the contents of her stomach.

"It only happens when a strong energy source is being forfeited for a weaker one," Dr. Mitchell explained, "my conjectures may be right. Your body will not survive well and long if it resists new energy. I cannot offer you mine. Your pull is too great for both of us to withstand with only my pool. Your body will undergo the change again and again until you are completely immortal. It will only speed up the process. You'll have less time to locate a blood-slave."

"I don't _want_ one," Beca gritted her teeth.

"Does she need the nurse?" a concerned lecturer stopped by, hands on protruding hips.

"I do."

One hour later Beca rose from the bed, tired of pretending to be tired. The surroundings smelled like sterilised metal and medicine. Her calloused index and thumb felt for the incision. It was gone, scab elsewhere and skin only very slightly pink as the mirror told her. Beca didn't enjoy the neighbourhood. There were fewer ruffians to manhandle.

Entering the darkened studio Beca lifted a hand, informing the emcees of her arrival. She put her name down on a slip of paper and found a seat, watching intently and observing the red-haired and blonde-haired ladies in the front, one of which was causing her blood to do cross-country again. She leant back and reached for sheep jumping over a fence.

"Beca Mitchell?" a voice wrenched Beca from youthful sleep.

"Yes."

"The stage is yours."

A microphone was launched at her, projectile targeting her face. And she shouldn't have been able to catch it, but she forwent the need to look human in favour of the need to see less of the nurse's office for the day. Her wrist snapped forward and she caught the menacing object.

Beca let it rebound and the microphone slapped a cocky man in the face.

The yellow plastic cup was emptied of stationery and Beca began to sing a song of the past. There were taps and jigs and small runs in the middle and when Beca was done she left her prop onstage, unfolding her legs and standing to leave.

Chloe Beale caught up with Beca much later, as both exited the building for the cafeteria and café. She picked up the classic grilled cheese sandwich and distorted her expression in reaction to Chloe's disapproving shake of the head.

"You really shouldn't, if you're going to be part of the Bellas," Aubrey clicked past.

Beca took a deliberate bite out of her food and turned to Chloe, who held a clipboard and bag of books and rented movies.

"You were great," Chloe beamed again, "only you looked like you needed the washroom."

Beca felt green in the face once more. She scoffed down the sandwich and picked up Chloe's bag before spinning towards the dormitories. She closed her eyes and told herself not to think of communal showers and Chloe's potentially invasive personality.

"What are you doing?" Chloe asked.

"Walking you up there," Beca murmured under her breath, but Chloe was close enough to make her words audible.

"Chivalry is dead," Chloe pointed out, "are you getting rid of me?"

Beca sighed, "No."

"It seems like you are," Chloe protested, "but if you're not you could always stay for the night. I stayed over. It's fair we have a sleepover at my room too."

There was a bit of quiet before Beca motioned aimlessly, "it wasn't a sleepover. It was an arrangement of convenience. Get that into your head and don't forget it. I really don't like sleepovers, anyhow."

"Don't be a spoilsport."

Beca almost threw a smile outwards.

"So?"

"So? No."

Chloe frowned, "come on, we're watching 'The Notebook'."

"That sounds positively horrible," Beca grinned, "who's we?"

"Aubrey's bringing Stacey and I thought I'd bring you," the redhead said, quietly and at a slower pace than before.

Beca let the information fester in her brain before she shook her head once more. Stacey was another one of those numbskulls who watched the 'E! Network', cared for cuticle care and shrieked over one-too-many boy-bands. Aubrey was out of the question.

And Chloe Beale was just dangerous.

"So you'll come?"

"No," Beca grumbled, "I won't. I don't like movies. I don't like sappy flicks. I'm not fond of Stacey's exhibitionism and I'm not going to pull the stick out of Aubrey's arse for three billion dollars."

Pragmatically Beca had turned Chloe down, but in practical terms the closer they were physically and the more Chloe let her shining blue eyes bore into Beca's soul the more wasted both would be. But there was the obstacle: Chloe's persistence and spirit.

"So you are avoiding me."

"I'll come," Beca conceded, "what time do I show up?"

"I'll pick you up at ten."

"We're six doors away," Beca notified her.

"I know," Chloe smiled, "I've just always wanted to say that."

Beca left the bag at Chloe's door and took herself back down the hallway, turning left and then right to enter her room. She shut the door, locked it, placed her cell-phone into the stand and turned up the volume on the speakers. Wrapping her hands in gauze and cloth material again Beca fingered the grilles of the windows. She loosened the frames and placed them onto the wooden floor.

In minutes Beca was swinging herself freely onto the rooftop. There she would kick shingles off the library, the nearby cathedral and perhaps stop at the hospital's underground freezers for stock in the refrigerator. She leapt from place to place, decapitating weasel after weasel and finally achieving equilibrium.

The canvas bag slung from Beca's shoulder was a hefty burden with six bags of blood, dated back two days for transfusion purposes. Beca made sure to leave the 'O's and often found 'AB's on her more patient expeditions to aid the better recovery of the terminal diseases. It let her retain certain edges of humanity, even as she was losing inches of it daily.

Beca found a filthy cook with a soup pot at eight at night, breaking his left calf in two and assuring that he would need amputation in the future. She dug her nails into his back after shredding his stained uniform. Fresh incisions had been made at her fingertips. The whorls were excited for refreshments.

The blood was dirtied as well. There were hints of drug abuse and loads of overdose on alcohol. Beca had the brand of vodka just on the tip of her tongue, but she cared much less for it. She drew as much as she needed and then left him with a couple of pints for living with.

She refused to let the wounds close. There needed to be some messy evidence for an animal attack and Beca held a deceased weasel over the unconscious and burly man. She left the rodent's remains upon the breathing body and prepared herself to call for an ambulance.

At ten she showed up, clean and showered.

**AN: Hi there, all. Thank you for reading and showing interest in the story. I'll get chapters up weekly. Feel free to leave constructive criticism and so on. Currently the piece is not yet themed darkly, but soon a plot will develop, not forgetting romance and so on. This may be rated M for future chapters. I don't have a beta, so if there are errors, do notify me.**

**-chakramrain**


	3. Attestations

Chloe Beale did not notice the smudges of crusted black in Beca's coat when she stopped by. Beca Mitchell did not notice darkening orbs setting themselves on her shoulder blades as she moved into the dormitory, shutting the door behind herself soundly. A predator's gaze was weighty and laden with a thirst for blood and an unnatural form of feeding: direct, stolen simplicity.

Aubrey wasn't in the brightest of moods and Beca's gallant appearance certainly did not have a soothing effect. She condoned the imp's arrival as she was netted by a vibrant smile upon Chloe's face. She kept an arm around Stacey's and kept her bottom on the couch, not beginning to feel the girl's palm coaxing her into subservience by slow rubs along her thigh.

There was a clenching of fists about Beca's chest and vines began to wrap themselves around her rib-cage, nearing her lungs and threatening to constrict themselves around those. Beca let Chloe lead her to the couch. The girls were dressed in pyjamas and cotton shorts. Beca was clothed inappropriately with ragged leather gloves, a tweed coat and a collared shirt with jodhpurs, for she looked as if she had just stepped out from a Shakespearean novel. Chloe's eyes appraised her and her arms reached around the shorter lady to aid her in the removal of the excess fabric.

"I'll try to keep awake," was all Beca said in greeting and Chloe pushed a bowl of popcorn into her hands.

"That's good enough for me," came a non-judgmental reply.

The night was awkward and the only consolation to Beca was that a redhead, about a year older, was gripping her wrist and leading her through the movie, running on about the romantic scenes and sniffling suitably at the heartbreaking ones. Beca didn't dare to yawn, for Aubrey might have impaled her with a wooden stake. Within Beca things stirred and she caught onto Aubrey's tensed arm about Stacey's hips.

The excellent portion of being non-human lay in emotional circumstances. At times it was favourable to know when someone was about to stick a needle into her thigh and at other times Beca didn't care for how Aubrey was struggling with homophobia and homophobic tendencies.

"They died."

"While holding each other, old and withered," Aubrey offered.

"This is my fifth time," Chloe exhaled, satisfied, "it's beautiful."

"I thought it was stupid," Stacey coughed up without much thought, "it would have been much better if they hadn't died."

"All great love stories end in death," Chloe pointed out, "for example there was 'Titanic' and 'Romeo and Juliet'."

"What about 'The Orphan'?"

"That had incest and horror," Aubrey reminded her, and then patted the girl on her cheek lightly.

Beca hadn't the heart to pull herself from Chloe's arms or to slip out from under the girl's legs, but she didn't look well upon a repeat of a previous night's events. Her knuckles skimmed themselves across Chloe's arm as Stacey and Aubrey engaged in light banter, discussing movies and better films. Chloe glanced up at Beca, who had one brow arched, gazes meeting for a moment in the rowdy space.

She leant down to Chloe's ear, feeling her knees and ankles entwined with Chloe's and Stacey's on the small couch.

"It's five minutes now, to midnight."

"Ah."

Neither of them moved.

"Lights out!" the voice rang loud and clear outside and Beca nearly threw up in anxiety, feeling for the bag of necessities beneath her and having a celebration within her as she found the canvas underneath her fingers.

"I'll take the couch," Beca proposed.

"Lord, no, they're not getting back," Aubrey muttered, "and I'm not getting any sleep."

"Just as well," Stacey seemed the most relaxed, "Cynthia Rose likes to stand over my bed and stare at me for quite a bit before sleeping. It hasn't been the greatest one-and-half weeks ever. I haven't been able to get sufficient beauty rest."

Beca rose, watching Chloe lift herself for convenience, and took to the smallest excuse for a kitchen to grab a cup of water. She felt the need to rinse her throat before she swallowed clumped bits of blood and whatnot in case tissue rejection appeared in the first few minutes. However, she wished too exhaustively.

As Stacey and Aubrey began rolling about elsewhere, Chloe stuck her thumbs into the loops of Beca's tight jodhpurs.

"You ride?"

"Occasionally I do with my father, but not today. I just couldn't find clean jeans from the laundry," Beca replied.

Chloe let her chin rest upon Beca's shoulder, "tell me more about you, then. I'd like to know. You can sleep in my bed. This is one of the larger dorms. You stay in my room."

"Commanding," Beca took her last sip and flicked the tap on the wash her utensil under running water.

"Get used to it; you'll be under me soon."

Beca left the mug on a rack and turned to offer Chloe a suggestive look.

"Fine, give me a minute in the bathroom."

As soon as she felt warmth leave her sides Beca clamoured for the bag, picking out one plastic sachet. Slicing the tube with a canine tooth, Beca pushed the contents of the sachet into her stomach, feeling it gurgle there and calm. She cupped more water past her lips to deal with the young breathlessness that might have evolved into a full searing of organs.

Beca emerged from the imaginary pile of dead bodies and stalked into the room where Chloe lay on the bed, nearly nude, with just a longish shirt and underwear on. It didn't help that Beca was licking at her lips in an effort to clean off all traces of having had a recent meal of cold blood.

"So this is why you walk about at night, just about to freeze to death," Beca rolled her eyes, seemingly unaffected.

"No, I just thought you might make more mean comments about my pyjamas," Chloe tapped the space next to her on the bed and beckoned for the other girl to swoop on in.

Beca did as was requested of her and Chloe did, in fact, turn out to be a hugger. Beca had no fangs. She had no use for them. Her teeth were already blades at all moments in time and her jowl was densely supported by sinew. She put the two rows of teeth together and willed them to stay that way.

"So you remix music?" Chloe asked, disregarding personal boundaries and moving in even closer.

"I remix and mix."

"Can I take a listen?"

"Ah, maybe."

Chloe didn't push for much, only nodded softly and willed herself to sleep as well. She slipped into a land of dreams at a quicker pace and Beca felt too suffocated to appreciate a friend's expressions.

In fact, her paranoia hardly was for naught. In alienating seconds through the first half hour after midnight all was silent and Beca's body entered a mode of relaxation. Her muscles were foregoing contraction and her forehead was pressed upon Chloe's cheek.

Two hours into the night a pallid streak of laughter clawed its way through stagnant air. Beca's ears were tuned into listening for sounds miles away, but the crazed sound was not far from her bedside. Her fingers tensed about Chloe's hipbones and she tucked her head into the crook of Chloe's neck. She palmed another sachet of blood from the bag on the floor and picked it up, staring at the glossy sheen.

Beca slung the bag over her shoulder once more and gingerly placed her toes upon the bedside's table, gliding up the wall until she could hoist herself to meet a ceiling window, narrow and like an unused vent. The appalling smell of rotting frog flesh smacked her in the nostrils and she shrunk back in horror.

The phone on the spreads vibrated detectably and Beca found it to be holding a waiting text.

'_Beca,_' it read, '_I've been informed of late-night activity. It's going to cause us trouble. They've left streaks of renewable energy. We may be implicated and I do hope you have nothing to do with it._'

Beca dialled the number quickly and placed the phone at her ear, "I've done nothing!"

"A hunter's on the loose," her father responded, "I want you to lie low."

In all her thirty years of living in dread, Beca had not been thrown into the underground circles of supposed danger and trauma. She'd been too busy with adolescent angst to know too much. With books she had been catching up on the times and the rules of clean feeding and living under the line.

"Hunter?"

"In the past two years there's been a cult-like group going about. They believe in direct energy sources. They hunt for immortals. They draw out every bit of energy, too. It takes a long time, but they enjoy group feeding. It's the pack mentality that I've been studying and my research has led me to this place, where killings are often and bloody. I've seen only one killed, though, which had qualities of an immortal. The group is getting organised, however. You need to keep yourself hidden and inconspicuous for a while until I'm sure they've moved on."

"How big would you say the group is?" Beca let her eyes move to a sleeping Chloe and back to the blank wall ahead.

"Ten, approximately," Dr. Mitchell guessed, "They've been able to disguise their bite marks as animal ones, but only to the cops and not to us. I've looked over findings and images. I can distinguish about seven different markings associated with different people."

"Haven't they tested salivary remains?" Beca asked, growing thoroughly feral by the minute, "surely they'd have found something, or that the genetic makeup isn't typical."

Dr. Mitchell, from afar, shook his head as he tried again, "there's enough of animal genes to close the case. If they don't know, they don't want to know. Either way, keep yourself down until your birthday. Then perhaps the change may be complete."

Behind Beca Chloe made a small movement and Beca heard echoes of that same shrill laughter, like that of the outback's few stray dingoes making calls and interacting before a hunt. Either that, Beca thought, or they were celebrating a successful kill. She didn't want to know.

From her side Beca raised the bag of blood and set her phone back down. She dropped the item in her hand through the window and then shut it before she could hear a splatter. The howling of excitable winds also ceased and Beca knew, too well, that whatever the hunters were after, they would be informed that another immortal did not need disturbance in her night's rest. And they would be clean, this time, too.

Every bag had been slit lightly to break open easily should Beca have needed a fast renewal of resources. In this same manner Beca had left traces of herself for claim over her meals and sources. Her gleam of extraterrestrial energy would be different from those of other immortals, due to the packaging of proteins secreted in the saliva. Her father was discreetly a large figure in the world of the unknowns and Beca seldom used it to her advantage.

Chloe shifted again as Beca pulled herself under the covers to be warmed.

"Go to sleep," the brunette said against Chloe's hair, unaccustomed to bare legs around her own, "you'll be fine tomorrow."

Beca knew nothing for sure, but she sensed a tumultuous feeling in her chest starting to riot about how uneasy the situation's qualities were. Beca was calling out for the lions and tigers and hoping that her set of new teeth would be enough for a roaring showdown, more of display than an all-out battle.

But more than ever, Beca felt the accumulating urge to sink her teeth into Chloe's flesh and to see the red flow, so different from her dark blue. She never appreciated taste but she felt the energy fizz between them, almost ripping skin to join and be balanced. Beca began to realise the comfort of Chloe's arms and soon left the land of the conscious.

AN: Hello again. Thanks for reading once more and reviews are always appreciated beyond belief. I understand that a few people want to know about what exactly Beca and Dr. Mitchell are and the entire mythical or scientific back-story I am basing this on. However, I prefer to keep this in the mystery, as if readers are encountering them for the first time, just as Chloe does in the piece, so along the way, in the next few chapters, Dr. Mitchell will clarify Beca's own doubts; Beca will explain her being in a chapter titled 'Revelations'. I'm not being wishy-washy with my foundations for the piece. It's just another method of gradually uncovering and revealing a plot and its resultant tension. Again, I will be updating weekly. Thank you for your interest.

-chakramrain


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